Love Deeply, If at All

Late-stage stomach cancer, with abdominal lymph node metastasis. The prognosis wasn’t good.

Inside Evergreen Hospital’s VIP consultation room, Edward removed his gold-rimmed glasses, his handsome face tight with worry. He looked at the woman on the sofa across from him, so thin she was almost unrecognizable.

“Diana, the results are back. It’s malignant.”

“If we start chemo right away and follow with surgery, the five-year survival rate…”

The report crumpled in Diana Russell’s fist before she shoved it into her shoulder bag. She gripped the leather strap until her knuckles blanched.

“Edward, if I don’t treat it… how long do I have?”

Her former senior, Edward FitzRoy, drew in a breath. “Three to six months, depending on the individual. But in your case, you need treatment immediately to stop it from spreading any further.”

“No.” Diana stood and gave him a deep, formal bow. “I can’t get through that. And I don’t have the money.”

“Edward, please keep this confidential. I don’t want anyone to know.”

Edward let out a helpless sigh. He knew Diana’s nature. Once she decided, no one could move her.

“Don’t worry. I won’t say a word. But you’re married—your husband…”

At the mention of that man, the last trace of light in Diana’s eyes went out.

“Edward, thank you. I have to go.”

She turned and hurried away, her frame frail and slight. Edward watched her leave and exhaled again, the sound heavy in his chest.

The brightest talent their program had ever produced had been reduced to this after marriage.

Was it really worth it?

Crystal Haven.

Diana pushed open the heavy doors. Instead of warmth, a chill met her. In the vast living room, the chandelier cast a cold glow over the expensive decor.

Nicholas was sitting at the center of it all.

He wore a perfectly tailored black suit, one leg crossed over the other, every line of him polished and aristocratic. Diana’s heart jolted with confusion.

This man she might not see once a month—why was he home today?

Nicholas Kennedy lifted his eyes, his gaze dark and unreadable. Then he stood and walked straight toward her.

Diana instinctively stepped back, but he caught her wrist in a punishing grip. That familiar, icy scent closed around her. The next second, he swept her into his arms.

Diana’s mind went blank.

He hadn’t touched her in more than half a year. Why now?

The moment he threw her onto the bed in the master suite, a ridiculous, heartbreaking thought flashed through the dead silence inside her.

Did he still feel something for her?

That tiny spark of hope made Diana stop resisting.

There was no kiss. No foreplay.

He tore at her clothes, rough and impatient, and thrust into her—like a one-sided plunder, like punishment. He panted through fierce strokes, sweat sliding from his chest onto her skin.

Diana closed her eyes and let him take what he wanted. The twisting pain in her stomach braided with the ache in her chest until her vision threatened to go dark.

She didn’t know how long it lasted. Then he growled low and came, and everything finally went still.

Diana lay curled in the rumpled sheets, her body sore and marked, her heart worse. The man beside her had already pulled away, not even pretending to linger.

Water ran in the bathroom.

A moment later, Nicholas emerged with a towel around his waist, grabbed a document from the closet, and tossed it onto the bed beside Diana’s bare thigh.

A divorce agreement.

Black ink on white paper. Brutally stark.

“Sign it.” His voice held no warmth. In a room still carrying the aftermath of sex, it sounded even colder. “Don’t make me say it twice.”

The fragile spark of hope that had flared inside Diana went out at once.

She understood.

What had just happened wasn’t impulse. It wasn’t old feelings, resurfacing at the wrong time.

It was the last bit of compensation he meant to give her. A final transaction before he threw her out—her body, in exchange for his clean conscience.

Diana forced herself upright and grabbed the papers. She thought of the diagnosis in her bag, of Edward’s grave expression, of those brutal three months.

Was this really how the last stretch of her life would end—humiliated, discarded with a single shove?

“Nicholas.” A thread of hope, so pitiful she almost wanted to laugh, clawed its way out of the cracks in her heart. “Can you give me three more months?”

Three months.

No more. No less. Everything she had left.

Nicholas gave a short, mocking laugh. “Diana, what game are you playing now?”

He rose and stepped closer. “Two years of a contract marriage, and the money from The Kennedy Family still isn’t enough for you?”

His chilled fingertips caught her chin and forced her to look up. “Or did you plan it out? Three months is enough time to squeeze something else out of me.”

Every word was merciless.

“Lindsey is coming back.” Nicholas shoved her aside, impatience sharp in his voice. “I’m not letting her see you.”

Lindsey Johnson—the woman at the center of his heart.

Diana went pale. So she really was coming back. Then Diana, the unwanted substitute, had to leave. Immediately.

A ringtone cut through the silence.

Nicholas took out his phone, and the hard lines of his face softened the instant he saw the screen. It was a tenderness Diana had never seen from him.

Without thinking, she turned her head.

One glance, and her whole world tilted.

On his lock screen was a photo that cut straight through her. An amusement park under bright sunshine. Nicholas, Lindsey, and a little boy—maybe a year old, with Nicholas’s eyes and brows—smiled at the camera, radiant and unmistakably happy.

A family of three.

Diana’s mind buzzed, then shattered.

A year ago, when the doctor told her she was pregnant, joy had flooded her so fiercely she’d been too afraid to tell him. And then Nicholas had thrown an abortion consent form in front of her, his face blank.

“Diana, you’re not worthy of having my child.”

She had cried. She had begged. She had dropped to her knees in front of him.

In return, his people had forced her onto the operating table.

The cold bite of instruments inside her body. The despair of blood soaking the sheets. The nightmare that still woke her in the dark.

So that was the truth.

He already had a child with another woman. He had killed their baby with his own hands just to make room for Lindsey’s.

How laughable.

How cruel.

Hatred and bone-deep despair swallowed her whole. Diana looked at him, and the light in her eyes went out inch by inch until nothing remained but ash.

Everything she’d clung to—her resentment, her longing, her foolish hope—was ground to dust beneath that smiling photo.

“Fine.” The word was almost weightless, and it took everything she had left to say it. “I’ll divorce you.”

Nicholas visibly stilled. “What did you say?”

Diana didn’t look at him again. She walked to the coffee table. The nib scratched across the paper, soft and relentless.

She signed, then dropped the pen.

“Nicholas.” She looked up, tears on her pale face, her voice calm and final. “Tomorrow at nine. Court.”